By Francisco Tochetti, TEP
Wealth Planning Advisor – Legal, Tax & Compliance
Wealth planning is the process of organizing family assets, both locally and internationally, while considering each family’s characteristics, needs, and goals to ensure continuity and long-term growth.
It is no longer a luxury reserved for a select few. For families who live, invest, and move across multiple jurisdictions, it has become a strategic necessity.
Today, the challenges extend well beyond the organization of assets. Families must navigate global regulations, protect privacy in an increasingly transparent world, and ensure the continuity of family projects in a rapidly changing environment.
Challenges, Common Mistakes, and Trends
For families with assets, investments, and members across multiple jurisdictions, the greatest challenge is aligning rules and ensuring compliance in each country. Advisors must understand the risks in depth and collaborate with colleagues abroad in order to deliver integrated solutions.
Common Mistakes in Practice
The most common mistakes include underestimating the tax impact in different jurisdictions, keeping outdated structures without economic substance, or failing to implement a formal, agreed succession plan. These oversights can not only lead to unnecessary costs, but also to delays, loss of control, and family disputes.
Emerging Trends
The current trend favors more conventional and transparent structures that are resilient to regulatory change. The choice will always depend on the family’s tax residency and the type of investment, but the tendency is to favor simplicity and avoid complex structures unless they are truly necessary.
Trusts are being used more widely, even though few countries give them full tax recognition. PPLI and unit-linked policies are also gaining ground, and in some cases even changes of tax residency may be valid strategies.
In practice, a wealth plan can be straightforward or highly sophisticated, though not necessarily complex, depending on the circumstances. The key is that each plan should be truly bespoke, designed to fit the family it serves.
Taxation and Compliance
Tax is always part of the equation, and international taxation has seen unprecedented regulatory change over the past decade. CRS and FATCA have redefined the rules around banking secrecy and transformed the very concept of a tax haven. On top of this, specific and general anti-avoidance rules and the BEPS framework have raised the bar, requiring structures to have real substance and a valid economic purpose whenever a fiscal benefit is involved.
The New Tax Landscape
The challenge is to move away from the idea that tax efficiency simply means avoiding taxes. Efficiency can be achieved in many ways: avoiding source-country taxation, optimizing withholding, securing legitimate deferrals, or applying transparency regimes that improve returns. Sometimes efficiency means keeping the same tax burden but through a structure that strengthens succession planning or privacy. Proper use of Double Tax Treaties through an appropriate structure can also be a valid and effective approach.
Redefining Efficiency
Balancing efficiency with compliance is critical. Today, a well-designed tax strategy is measured not only by savings, but also by its sustainability and legitimacy over time.
Ultimately, taxation is only one part of the puzzle. Asset protection, succession planning, and the family’s right to privacy are equally central to any wealth plan.
Succession and Family Continuity
Succession is often the most sensitive element of wealth planning. Beyond the financial aspects, it requires balancing interests, managing expectations, and preventing disputes that can erode both family wealth and family harmony.
A strong succession plan goes beyond theory. It must ensure that assets can be transferred efficiently, respecting each jurisdiction’s formalities in order to shorten timelines and avoid complications. It is essential to account for forced heirship rules where they exist and to follow the laws that apply both to the deceased and to the heirs.
Designing Flexible Structures
Flexibility is especially important when family members live in different countries. Wills, trusts, private interest foundations, and family protocols can all play a role. These may be reinforced with tools like letters of wishes, powers of appointment, or governance mechanisms such as protectors or family committees that provide oversight and continuity.
Educating the Next Generation
Whenever possible, heirs should be gradually involved and educated in the process. Succession planning should also be revisited when there are family changes such as marriages, births, or divorces, when a family member changes residence, when new investments are made, or simply on a regular basis to ensure its continued relevance.
Final Thoughts
Wealth planning has entered a new era. International families face more opportunities than ever, but also more risks and greater demands. In this environment, the role of the Wealth Planner is to guide, educate, and coordinate, bringing together legal, tax, and family considerations into a single, coherent plan.
Good wealth planning does not promise shortcuts. It creates order, provides governance, and ensures compliance and continuity. The standard today is to design structures with substance, easy to operate, defensible before banks and regulators, and consistent with both the tax residency of the family and the nature of their investments.
Success is not measured only by the taxes saved. It is measured by the resilience of the plan, the clarity of the documentation, and above all the peace of mind it gives to the family.
